Fantasia Fest 2023: Interview With Jared Moshé, Director Of ‘Aporia’

Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SGA-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Aporia being covered here wouldn’t exist.

It’s my favorite time of year! No, not Halloween or Christmas. My other favorite time! It’s Fantasia International Film Festival time! And just like always, the fest if chock full of goodies for me.

My first interview for this year’s fest is Jared Moshé (The Ballad of Lefty Brown – 2017), writer and director of Aporia. 

Since losing her husband, Sophie has struggled to manage grief, a full-time job, and parenting her devastated daughter, but when a former physicist reveals a secret time-bending machine, Sophie will be faced with an impossible choice.

Dealing with the heavy subject of grief, Aporia stars Judy Greer (Jawbreaker – 1999), Edi Gathegi (Twilight – 2008), and Payman Maadi (Westworld – 2020). What if you had the ability to slightly change the past, would you do it? And what would be the consequences?

To celebrate Aporia‘s world premiere at Fantasia, I chatted via Zoom with Jared about the inspiration behind the film, building the machine, what’s up next, and more!

PopHorror: Hi Jared! I really enjoyed Aporia. It really was not what I expected and tugged at my heartstrings. I’m super excited to talk with you about it.

Jared Moshé: Thank you so much!

PopHorror: What inspired the film and how did the project come about?

Jared Moshé: The film was very much inspired by I’d say two things. The first was I had just become a dad. My son was turning one when I wrote this, when I started coming up with the idea for the script. And I was sort of experiencing suddenly the world became a lot more terrifying and a lot more uncertain, and I felt this overwhelming urge to try to control that uncertainty. I wanted to explore what I was wrestling with internally through a story, and I had no idea how to do that. At the same time, I also had this idea that had been at the back of my head for a gun that could shoot back in time and kill someone in the past. I never knew what to do with that idea because you go to these really obvious big places of, “Oh, let’s kill baby Hitler!” “Let’s kill some huge person and change history and make everything really wild!” And that never really appealed to me in a storytelling way. I sort of combined this idea of what happens if someone uses this device to try to gain better control over their life and as a way to explore that battle with uncertainty. 

PopHorror: So tell me about the machine. What was designing it like and building it?

Jared Moshé: My production designer, Ariel Vida, I’ve been a huge fan of her work for a very long time. I had two production designers on this project. I had Kati Simon who handled everything, and then Ariel, who handled the machine. Ariel, I love her work. I basically gave her one big piece of direction – this machine needs to look like a fire hazard. Like when you turn it on you think you’re going to burn down this building. Like that’s what’s going to happen. I want it to make no sense. I want it to feel like wires are everywhere, batteries are everywhere. It’s just unsafe. And Ariel ran with that. I think she went to all the junk shops and found old engine parts and started putting it together because the other aspect of the machine is it was really important to me that this wasn’t like some sleek, cool Bruce Wayne-y rich person’s machine. This is a machine that’s like the most powerful machine in the world in the most unassuming building you could ever imagine, built by the most unassuming people you’d ever seen. I wanted it to feel like something that was just made, like scrapped together from parts from junkyards, what you could get from a fridge and a junk truck. Or you’d go and take something off a used car, or you could go Target and buy some piece of shit vacuum and rip that apart. Car batteries you salvaged. I wanted it to feel just very hodge podge-y put together that way.

PopHorror: I think you were successful because you said you wanted it to look like a fire hazard, and it looked like it had already been on fire. 

Jared Moshé: It probably has been on fire. It probably had been turned on and half the time it turned on, something burned, something got on fire, and they just wiped it down for a second. I imagine when they were building it, there’s like a fire extinguisher there. Like they’re prepared for everything to go wrong all the time, every time they plug it in. Like plugging it in is just as scary as anything else.

PopHorror: You definitely achieved that. Aporia is having its world premiere at the prestigious Fantasia today.

Jared Moshé: Yes, it’s tonight!

PopHorror: How does that feel?

Jared Moshé: I’m really excited to bring this project to the world. It’s been quite a journey to get here, and shooting during Covid was an adventure in and of itself. It’s personal to me. I’m so excited to be at Fantasia and so excited for the audience to see it. But it’s also a little bittersweet to have to release a film without my actors being there because AMPTP won’t give them a fair deal.

PopHorror: Agreed. 

Jared Moshé: I got in last night and I’ve been meeting so many wonderful people here. They’re just so enthusiastic about the movie. It feels like it’s a festival full of film lovers. I’ve been to a lot of film festivals in my time, and you can feel the love of film here, which is sometimes rare in a film festival.

PopHorror: I agree. This movie is pretty heavy, and it deals with the sensitive topic of grief. What do you hope people walk away with after watching your film?

Jared Moshé: I hope anyone who watches this film will walk home and give their loved one a hug. Go tell their kids how much they matter to them. Go spend time with their spouse, call their mom, call their dad. Appreciate the people in your life. I remember we had an early test screening of it with a bunch of friends, and after we did all the Q&As and asked for notes, one of my friends texted me after he got home, and he said, “I just came home and hugged my daughter.” And I said, “That is the perfect reaction to this movie.”

PopHorror: I love that! What made you want to be a filmmaker?

Jared Moshé: This is weird. I wanted to be a filmmaker because I love the power of storytelling – to affect people’s emotion and to look at their life and look at history. I’ve always remembered… Okay, weird reference, Braveheart. Braveheart is this movie that came out and it’s Mel Gibson telling this crazy story and now there’s like this statue of William Wallce in Scotland that looks like Mel Gibson. People think the Battle of Stirling took place in a giant field and not a bridge. It like reframed history. I was, I don’t know, 17 or something at the time that movie came out and I was very impressed with how it changed people’s understanding of history and the ability of our stories to affect the understanding of the world. It was very profound to me. I wanted to be able to affect people that way.

PopHorror: What is up next for you?

Jared Moshé: I have another sci-fi project that we’re hoping to put together that’s been optioned. It’s a straight indie sci-fi project. I have a couple others that I’m hoping we can get in gear once the strike is over.

PopHorror: Awesome, I’m super excited to see what you have coming up for us. One last question for you today. What’s your favorite scary movie?

Jared Moshé: My favorite scary movie… Does From Dusk Till Dawn count? That’s my kind of scary movie.

Thank you so much to Jared for taking the time to speak with us. Aporia is currently in its festival run but will be release in theaters August 11, 2023.